Zbrush or Substance Painter for Surface Details?

NURBS

When it comes to adding small, surface detail into my textures (things like cracks, scratches, fibers, wood grain & wood splitting, dents) I usually use the various grunge maps in Substance Painter, but I've recently started learning Zbrush and now I'm wondering which program should I use to get small details? Should I sculpt a high-poly in Zbrush or use the grunges in Substance?

Kanni3d

either way works, most would argue doing tertiary/fine details like that in painter is best with anchor points since it's less destructive (wouldn't require a re-sculpt + rebake to adjust any details).

rexo12

Most of those details you mention I would do in Painter. They're high-frequency, typically quite shallow in terms of height detail and also easily tileable, making them suited for texturing as opposed to modelling. Generally if any details don't fit those criteria I tend to put them in geometry (e.g. bolts, large dents, edge cuts, etc.)

I find that generally, bakes from geometry produce better looking results than stamped alphas, which is something to keep in mind.